Jerry Reyes, 52, of Temple City casts his votes in the June 5 primary. A half dozen House races in Southern California figure to be super close and could go a long way to determining which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives. A growing world of forecasters suggest the races are mostly toss-ups. (Correspondent photo by Trevor Stamp)

Can a Republican lawmaker in Riverside and San Diego counties keep his job while under indictment? Will key congressional districts in long-Republican Orange County go Democratic? Will L.A. County’s U.S. House delegation be all Democratic after the Nov. 6 election?

Yes, maybe, and maybe according to a huge and growing world of political forecasters who’ve published predictions for the midterm congressional elections.

Southern California has more competitive races than usual this year, with Democrats hoping to capture Republican-held House seats in six districts where more voters supported Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Democrats are campaigning hard against GOP incumbents Steve Knight of Palmdale (25th District), Mimi Walters of Irvine (45th), Dana Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach (48th) and Duncan Hunter of Alpine (50th). And they’re trying to take advantage of the retirements of Republicans Ed Royce of Fullerton (39th) and Darrell Issa of Vista (49th).

At the same time, there have never been more election forecasters purporting to make sense of it all.

After 2016, when many forecasters were ridiculed for overrating Clinton’s chances in the presidential race, some are being more cautious about declaring clear favorites in individual elections and the parties’ nationwide battle for control of the House, currently held by Republicans.

“A little bit of humility in talking about [expectations] is warranted,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, which still rates four of Southern California’s six pivotal races as “tossups.”

“We’re trying to reflect the doubts.”

Most House handicappers are less cautious.

We looked at predictions for Southern California’s half-dozen key races from the forecasters listed above — plus a tenth, the London-based The Economist magazine, for a foreign view — and found a range of predictions. Often a range of predictions within the same race.

50th District: To show you how much room there is for argument about expectations for the November elections, the forecasters’ biggest point of agreement is that Rep. Duncan Hunter will cruise to re-election. It’s possible to picture this popular pick going horribly wrong, in that Hunter and his wife Margaret were indicted late last month for allegedly taking campaign funds for personal use.

Polls after the indictments were announced still favored Hunter over Democrat Ammar Campa-Najjar in the heavily Republican district. FiveThirtyEight’s stew of data gives Hunter an 86.4 percent chance of winning as of Friday morning, while the prediction-market bettors at PredictIt give Hunter a much narrower 58 percent chance. All of the analysts give Hunter the edge, with the most certain-sounding descriptions coming from Roll Call and Fox (“likely”), CNN (“solid”) and The Economist (“safe”).

The forecasters’ current consensus: Hunter is the likely winner.

49th District: This is the other race in which the 10 forecasters agree. All have Democrat Mike Levin defeating Republican Diane Harkey to flip the Orange and San Diego county seat long held by Republican Issa. They just don’t favor Levin as clearly as they favor Hunter in District 50.

48th District: There’s a real difference of opinion about the re-election chances of Rohrabacher, who has been under fire for ties to Russia. The Economist and MyBookie strongly favor Rohrabacher’s chances in a district where Republicans hold a 10.5 point registration advantage over Democrats. But FiveThirtyEight and PredictIt make Rouda’s chances of winning 66.8 percent and 62 percent, respectively.

Will Jennings, head of public engagement for PredictIt, said the website’s percentages can provide valuable insight because they reflect opinions of customers risking real money on the outcomes of elections and other political events.

“People with skin in the game are much more inclined to sit and think about the nuances,” Jennings said. “Anytime I look at [the percentages on] PredictIt and contrast that with some of the stuff you read, it gives me a little more pause.”

The Crystal Ball’s Kondik said the races rated as tossups will be moved into one or the other candidate’s column before election day.

Kondik said it’s “challenging” to predict what will happen in the Orange County congressional districts that used to be Republican strongholds but now see voter registration percentages shifting.

“The one thing I’m sure of is that these seats will be more competitive than they have been in the past,” Kondik said.

Consensus: The forecasts lean toward Walters.

39th District: The forecasts reflect a very competitive race to succeed Republican Ed Royce, who is stepping down from representing a district that touches parts of Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. The gamblers at PredictIt and MyBookie give Democrat Gil Cisneros about a 60 percent chance of defeating Republican Young Kim, but most of the experts still see it as a tossup.

Consensus: The race is a tossup or leans toward Cisneros.

25th District: The 39th and 25th are rare congressional districts partly in L.A. County that are held by Republicans. The 25th District race between Republican incumbent Steve Knight and Democratic challenger Katie Hill shapes up as another tight one, according to the forecasters.

Cook and Sabato call it a tossup, Roll Call has it tilting toward Knight, and FiveThirtyEight give solid edges to Hill.

FiveThirtyEight used the 25th District race as the example in explaining how its forecasts for all 435 House elections work. It showed how, even though Knight has been ahead in the polls FiveThirtyEight tracks, Hill has a bigger advantage in “fundamentals” (“non-polling factors like fundraising and a district’s voting history”) that influence elections’ outcomes.

Consensus: tossup.

Election forecasting is as old, it’s safe to say, as elections. But the forecasting industry has boomed in recent election cycles. The rise of politics as team sport has intensified public interest in who will win elections and factors such as the internet, the availability of data and analytical innovations like those popularized by Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, have all helped add to the hunger for predictions.

Kondik said he hopes interest in election predictions will lead to — rather than distract from — interest in the substance of public policy.

What do campaign professionals think of the forecasters’ work?

“They can predict the future, but they don’t know the future,” said Matt Fleming, communications director for the California Republican Party. “It doesn’t change our calculus.”